


More than One

by waywardriot



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-15 19:59:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18676438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardriot/pseuds/waywardriot
Summary: Step by aching step, Sora and Roxas teach each other what it means to feel anything and everything.A collection of drabbles/prose for #soroku7feels on Twitter.





	1. Happiness

_i._ **Happy** | hap·py | \ ˈha-pē \  
* enjoying or characterized by well-being and contentment : GLAD

* * *

  
“Are you happy, Roxas?”

Despite the persistence, Roxas never has a real answer for that question, instead veiling it behind a smile that keeps the bile behind his teeth from spilling past his lips. Sora doesn’t know it, but although Roxas hides it, he hasn’t felt real happiness in a very long time.

People move on, places are rebuilt, time goes on as the world keeps spinning on a stable axis. He, however, is rooted to the spot, left behind in the dust as reality continues its endless flow with no welcoming ebb following.

It’s okay because happiness is _Sora_. Sora, with his sun-kissed skin and smile that draws even the most broken of people in. Sora, with his unending enthusiasm and hands he offers to mend others’ pain. Happiness isn’t Roxas, moon-kissed as he feeds off the rays of sun that he selfishly lets himself absorb.

The closest the moon comes to happiness is _loving the sun._

—And that is why he won’t take those hands, no. He knows he’ll drag Sora down, iron weights on his wrists that pull and pull until he’s at the bottom of an ocean with nowhere to go but oblivion.

Roxas is what sits at the bottom of that ocean, rooted with his own iron weights as water fills his lungs and he loses sight of what’s _real._

Relentlessly, Sora continues to offer his hands, lifelines to pull Roxas from the bottom of the ocean, but he doesn’t know that it’ll just pull him down. Roxas is protecting him from it, protecting him from the hurt and grief and pain he bears on his back like Atlas, whose spine fractures under the weight of the world.

Sora will never stop looking at the moon-kissed boy with a cheerful smile that dims only when he denies him and says no, he’s okay; the sun-kissed boy deserves to be happy with others instead of worry over _him._

As deeply, _painfully_ as Roxas loves him, he lets him shed his sunshine on the rest of the world. Where would the world be without the sun?

The world would keep growing without the moon, right?

That’s why it’s okay for him to forgo happiness.

It’s okay.

It’ll continue to be okay.

It’s okay—

—until the day that Sora decides it’s no longer okay, the day that he refuses to take no for an answer; instead of beckoning, promising hands, they become vice grips on Roxas’s wrists, _demanding_ that they be acknowledged. It’s not okay until the hands slide down to lace their fingers with his own, spending sparks of joy that Roxas didn’t know he could feel.

It’s okay when Sora smiles at him and lilts soft words that light Roxas’s eyes up for the first time in… forever. It’s okay when arms wrap around him, pulling him into an embrace that fills the yawning hole concealed by his ribcage.

For what feels like the first time since the world started moving on without him, he _catches up,_ the sun-kissed boy pulling him back to reality with soft words, soft hands, soft lips that roll happiness straight into his mouth and down his throat.

The moon-kissed boy learns that he was never left behind; simply, everyone has been waiting for him, and the spin of the world made it look like yawning space.

And _Roxas_ literally becomes the sun-kissed boy, pulled by the sunshine back into reality, and finally, he can truthfully bear the smile, nectar between his lips instead of bile. At last, he can answer that question without a doubt, without a pain stabbing into his void.

“Yeah, I am, Sora.”


	2. Sadness

_ii._ **Sad** | sad | \ ˈsad \  
* affected with or expressive of grief or unhappiness : DOWNCAST

  


* * *

  
“You know, it’s okay to be sad, Sora.”

As much as it’s said, Sora has never been able to believe it. Someone has to be the smiling hero, right? Someone has to be the figurative light at the end of the tunnel, hand outstretched and pulling others from the brink. Everyone tells him that he saved them, and all these ~~false~~ friends plaster his bright smile back onto his face, covering the cries that want to tear from his throat.

Sora is the sun, and the sun must shine its light down on reality, as dictated by the heavens.

He’s grown to be okay with it. Really, he’s used to the self-sacrificial, to melting down in the safety of his dark room where no one can see. He only allows himself to break down where no eyes are open, no ears are uncovered, curling in on himself in the dust where pain was once born.

Roxas begs him to let him see, jiggles at the locked door of his heart, crying _Sora, if you’d just let me help you—_

But Sora is so afraid, so goddamn _afraid_ of opening that door, of people finding out and thinking less of him for what curls around his organs. As much as he trusts his friends ( _as much as he trusts Roxas_ ) with his whole heart, he buries what he feels, guilt and grief and upset hidden under layers of skin and muscle and bone tissue. If his loved ones leave again, slip through calloused fingers like stinging smoke, the sun will extinguish itself until only embers scorch the ground.

With so many people in his heart, there has never been room for his _own_ hurt. No, he would never regret bearing the hearts that he shielded as if they were his own, but there had been so much hurt inside that he let it eclipse his own—

 **Grief** , insecurity, fear.

Anger, **hatred** , so much pain.

Regret, sadness, **longing**.

**Frustration, betrayal, loneliness.**

He bore these dissociated emotions like a cross on his back for so long, weight that he didn’t know existed even though it bled out of his pores and dripped on the floor like thick, thick darkness. He couldn’t distinguish foreign tears from familiar tears, so he stifled them in favor of protecting the foreign ones.

And now, with the hearts freed and learning to live, Sora’s own pain, sadness, hurt, anger, betrayal, grief, **sadness** , have torn their way to the surface, splitting past layers of paper-thin body tissue until they can crawl up his throat and suffocate him behind his own smiles and ocean eyes.

Sometimes, the aching sadness overpowers him so much that all he can do is gasp on the floor of his room, digging his fingers into the rough fibers of the carpet as he desperately searches for the breath that got taken away with the four hearts.

Until _somehow,_ the frustrated boy, the betrayed boy, the lonely boy picks the lock of Sora’s heart, picks him up off the floor and wraps his sadness up in his arms like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like it’s _okay_ for Sora to shatter into little pieces that shred Roxas’s hands.

The moon has to assure the sun that it’s okay to set, that he will push and pull the tides while the sun trembles in his hands. He teaches him that the tears are natural, that clouds will always cover the sun and shed their pain upon the Earth.

Because that’s what the Earth needs to _grow;_ the sun cannot carry the world on its back because there is always _more_ to life, more to the fabric of reality that formed their very own hearts.

Some days, Sora sheds more tears than he thinks possible, soaking Roxas’s shirt with pure sadness—but Roxas never says no, never says that Sora isn’t supposed to feel this way. There are only soft words whispered, cooed into his ear until he’s cried himself as dry as the dust where he once lost everything.

The moon-kissed boy wipes the tears that hang from the sun-kissed boy’s lashes like regret and kisses the feather-soft eyelids until all they can do is laugh because the sun has come back out, evaporating the clouds from the atmosphere.

“I’m sad, Roxas—but that’s okay.”


	3. Anger

_iii._ **Angry** | an·ger | \ ˈaŋ-gər \  
* having a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism : IRATE

  


* * *

  
“Just let it free, Sora.”

Anger is a thing most wouldn’t expect from Sora. From his other, it’s reasonable; Roxas is a steadily burning flame, scorching underneath his skin until the moment it can burst out. Roxas’s anger is scary and controlled, calculated. When the Nobody is angry, people know he’s in control and has thought things out. It’s scary, terrifying, even, yes—but his friends know they can pull him out, arms stretching forward to remind him that it is okay, that there are solutions. 

For the very few who have seen it, Sora’s pure, unfilitered anger is scary, but in its own way.

His anger is the blazing sun turning everything to dust, burning the skin off everyone’s backs. It’s the sun going supernova, consuming everything in its path until all that is left is a cold, dead star, Sora shaking on the floor because he’s _so fucking numb._

The force of it scares people because _this is not the sun-kissed boy they know._

It even scares Sora itself in the way it consumes him; it comes upon him like a tsunami, knocking him off his feet and knocking him out until he’s been carried a million miles from home by the tide.

At its base level, it is primal, instinctual, the ghosts of the past telling him that _to survive, you must fight, sky boy, fight until the threat is no more._ Anger is the beast encoded in everyone’s genes, and his beast is untameable, controlled by no one—not even himself. 

No one can tame the beast inside because no one can _touch_ the beast inside without slashing claws and dripping faces. They get close enough to see the gaping maw and the razor-sharp teeth, and no one can brave that cavern. 

No one except—

Roxas, with the strength to hold back the beast, iron striking iron-clad claws until Sora is too tired to be anything but empty, eyes dimmed in a way that is nearly as scary as his anger because _the sun self-destructed._ He picks up the pieces of Sora embedded in the carpet, carefully putting him back together like the stained glass of his heart. 

It takes far too long, too much time spent trying not to shred delicate fingers over fiber for Sora to accept the help. He’s used to pushing the emotions inside himself and letting them burst out of his chest cavity, blood and bone and sinew, until he doesn’t even know who his actual self _is_ anymore. The sun, a star, a planet, a black hole sucking everything within—?

That’s how he has always done it, letting smiles and endless, nauseating enthusiasm carry him through life while ignoring the storm that brews on the horizon, sucking up the tide and spitting it back out. 

It takes time, it takes the moon diluting the sun’s light so that the people may stand below it. He teaches the sun that it doesn’t have to keep everything in and _flare_ ; rather, it’s okay to let it out little by little by little, the first steps of an infant who offered his heart to the wind. 

Roxas holds him, rubs his back gently as Sora shakes in anger, taking hold of himself as the anger leaks out through tears and swears—but the moon-kissed boy teaches him that this is good.

Suddenly, his anger is not all-consuming, it’s not foreign or terrifying or debilitating. It’s a bittersweet friend, letting his frustrations disappear into smoke. 

He teaches Sora how to temper the flame, turn the dial down and let it slowly burn away as it runs out of fuel. He teaches him that he can show his anger, that all his friends _understand,_ their own hate and rage over reality simmering below the surface. 

When Sora opens the gates for the anger to trickle through, he realizes that fire is natural, and Roxas is the water. 

“I think _I’m_ free, Roxas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> better late than never!


	4. Surprise

_iv._ **Surprised** | sur·prised | \ sər-ˈprīzd \  
* feeling or showing mild astonishment or shock : ASTOUNDED

  


* * *

  
“Roxas, they aren’t waiting for you anymore.”

Surprise has never been a good thing—to Roxas, at least.

Sora, his bright inverse, adores it; the sun-kissed boy loves surprising his friends, his family, his neighbors, that person who walks the same direction in the mornings. To him, surprises are good, something to cheer someone up.

For Roxas, the surprise of the unknown creeps up his spine, setting him on edge at all times as he waits for the sharp blade to drop upon his neck. The moon-kissed boy is reminded of times back _then_ , times caught by surprise with pain as claws dug into the meat of his back and chittered in his ear.

_Some_ surprises are okay for him: Flowers brought home, unplanned dates, random gifts on innocuous days. Others are not so good: Surprise parties, someone jumping from around a corner, unexpected loud noises. 

The difference is the suddenness that stops his heart, makes every neuron in his brain scream that _they are back for you, like they always will be._ The shock just breaks him down far too easily, until burning hot metal sits at the hollow of his best friend’s throat because she jumped on him from behind; equal blues stare at each other, wide on one side of the mirror and narrowed on the other. It takes gentle hands prying his calloused fingertips from the handle and familiar palms on his cheeks for him to come down and step back.

He apologizes over and over, insisting that this isn’t him, that he would never hurt her—but as much as she tells him it’s okay, he tears at his hair in private and lets his throat go raw. How can he forgive himself for doubting someone so achingly close to him?

She understands because this nervousness, this anticipation of danger ( _because being caught off guard is weak_ ) plagues most everyone they know; many have learned to put on brave faces so that they don’t worry others—but that means Roxas doesn’t know just how much they suffer, doesn’t know that he isn’t _alone._

All the same, he acts strong, laughing off his reactions like it was just a joke, like it was just funny, like _all he goes through is nothing serious._ No matter how much he trusts the people he knows, he knows that showing that he is weak and complacent can only lead to bad things, it can only ever lead to getting caught off guard—and so he pretends he is okay to everyone ( _almost everyone_ ).

Only Sora gets to see the true ramifications, the reality that lies beyond the mask of strength.

Only the sun feels the moon’s heart quicken beneath his palm, his ear, his lips, as he guards the moon while he sets. Only he quells the tremors, whispering words in his ear that are so soft they sting. Roxas would never let anyone else see him like this, but he needs Sora to hold him and rock him gently, swaying back and forth in a gentle rhythm that drags his heart back to tempo.

His other half drones on, a constant reminder that _the enemy is gone, they are safe, no one can get through him._ He reassures Roxas that they live in a protected place where no one can get to them without them knowing first; Sora is his sanctuary, his home, a constant that keeps him on course instead of trembling in a corner.

Bit by aching bit, Roxas learns that not every sudden surprise means danger; sometimes, surprises can mean _love_ , and he likes those best of all.

“I know, Sora, I’m safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> better late than never 2.0 (this one stumped me pretty hard so idk how it is)


	5. Fear

_v._ **Scared** | scared | \ ˈskerd \  
* thrown into or being in a state of fear, fright, or panic : AFRAID

  


* * *

  
“We’re safe. We’re both safe.”

For someone whose only instinct became fighting, adrenaline replacing blood, it’s natural to always fear, always worry about what is next, what monstrosity hides around the corner, behind a door, even in the open arms of a friend. After so much tearing at the ground to keep themselves alive and safe, their minds will not let them rest. 

It’s a fear that compounds itself, radiating out from the sun, taken in by the moon, reflected back on the world. A reciprocal cycle, an ouroboros that bites into itself with teeth that shake and rip through skin like tissue paper.

Just how afraid each of them is becomes more evident at night, the pinpricks in the sky lighting them up under the blankets, shaking and crying like a child that once cried in bed because _mom, they’re hurting in my heart._

More often than not, there are nightmares, ones that wake up in the night as they desperately try to suck in air, fear clogging their throats and filling their lungs.

Sora is prone to waking up crying, desperately clinging to his other and trying not to break the skin. He awakes with sudden gasps, bolt upright in bed as his heart pounds so loudly that he thinks the beat itself may have been what woke him up. With the sudden jerk back to reality, he desperately needs to know that something, someone is there, and everything hasn’t been lost to the darkness that once swept them away in plumes of smoke.

His other has to hold onto him, let Sora cling to his body like they’re one person again. Roxas often runs out of words to comfort, so all he can do is hold the sun-kissed boy like he’s all that separates sleep from wakefulness. Sora chatters anxiously about what happened, alternating between tears and hyperventilating, and Roxas reassures that none of that was real—what’s real is _him._

The sun sets, and the moon makes up the difference.

Roxas melts into his nightmares, like darkness snaking around his every limb and dragging him into the toxic syrup. He doesn’t wake on his own; rather, he lays there with tears clinging to his eyelashes, teeth clenched so hard that he’s afraid he’ll fracture them. The dark dreams take their course through his mind, dragging on until he feels like he’s crumbling from the inside out. 

His other has to heft him out of nightmares, frantically jostling him out of sleep with his own shaking hands—for it makes Sora even more scared when someone won’t wake from sleep. He brings the moon-kissed boy back to reality, smoothing his hands against Roxas’s hair to reassure that he’s not asleep anymore, that he escaped once again. Sora is there with open arms, a calming force that tempers Roxas down to even breaths and fluttering eyelashes.

The moon sets, and the sun watches guard.

No matter what, both of them end up with lungs deprived of air, the darkness in their sleep sucking everything from their bodies until they suffocate on the ethereal. Both of their hearts pound like the beat of a war drum, like they are determined to burst through their ribcages.

At these times, they are so grateful to have each other, driven to tears by the mere thoughts of having to handle this all on their own. All their friends suffer from nightmares now, too, and they find togetherness in all hoarsely whispering about their sleep to one another—but waking up alone in cold, sweat-soaked sheets is sometimes almost as bad as staying in their dreams.

A nightly routine of reassurances and intertwined legs steadies them, prepares them for the fear that will soon slither into their bed like an unwelcome guest. It’s hard to be as scared when the one you love swears to help fight the fear, and over time, they can wake up with unclouded eyes and clear throats.

Fear begets fear, but support ends the cycle, untangles the ouroboros, the sun and the moon working in tandem to light the way out.

“As long as you’re here, I’ll be safe.” 


	6. Embarrassment

_vi._ **Embarrassed** | em·bar·rassed | \ im-ˈber-əst \  
* feeling or showing a state of self-conscious confusion and distress : FLUSTERED

  


* * *

  
“Roxas, it’s not meant to hurt.”

Day in and day out, Roxas experiences new emotions; there are new flavors of every one he already knows, and there are even more than that. They branch on and off each other into endless paths, ones that makes his head spin because _there is so much to the world he has missed._

Not all of them are pleasant, but he’s used to that. Not all of them are unpleasant, and those can be harder to adjust to. Some verge in between, existing on one edge and swaying to the other. 

Out of all of the feelings that walk a fragile tightrope, embarrassment is one of the ones he dislikes the most. Sora will gush about each and every facet of Roxas, but Roxas himself hates the blush that spreads on his cheeks like his other painted it on, showing to everyone what he’s feeling. It comes with a weird sense of guilt that bites at his heels, feeling like it doesn’t belong in that place but hanging on tightly with sharp teeth that dig in.

It’s so _weird,_ this emotion that’s uncomfortable but not painful like everything he has ever known. It doesn’t sting, it doesn’t hurt—it’s inconvenient. Maybe he shouldn’t detest it that much for this very reason, but his fledgling heart has never followed what logic dictates.

His heart hates it because it is yet another sign of weakness that sloughs off of Roxas far too easily. It paints him as weak and vulnerable, showing that emotions can get to him. He can almost hear the slow, calculated words that would taunt him for any sign of weakness, any sign of not functioning as the perfect vessel he was created to be. His heart was born of an environment of cold and callousness, and it still holds onto it far too tightly.

As much as he hates when it paints his own face, embarrassment is beautiful on Sora; his face lights up like the sky over the sea at sunset, crimson washed along his cheekbones that Roxas longs to trace. Sora has that bashful laugh, hands behind his head as he gives a slightly lopsided grin that gives Roxas butterflies.

For that, he’s jealous.

Sora is embarrassment in its purest form, innocent and fun; he’s the type of person one can’t laugh at, but only with. He lets the emotion fall off his back and just enjoys the humor it brings to the situation. Once, he tells Roxas that the key to embarrassment is pretending you’re _not_ embarrassed, and then everyone will forget about it. 

Roxas wishes it were that easy, wishes he could be okay with _anything_ he feels in that way, but he can’t carry himself in the same carefree way that Sora navigates life. On his end, he has endless things to be embarrassed about—so many regrets about his life before, all the terrible things he did and the ways he hurt people.

The painful feeling of doing something that’s harmful or bad or not in the way the world dictates gnaws at him from the inside out; Sora tells him it’s different, that’s shame, but it sits in his stomach the same way that embarrassment does. He hates it all the same.

He's so goddamn _tired_ of having to fight tooth and nail to drag the emotions out of himself, pull them out and look them in the face like they are the enemy who wields some strange weapon that he doesn’t know the name of yet hurts him all the same.

It takes time, so much time of the sun reassuring the moon that no one cares about what he did, that he must rise again—and the sun was right, for each time the moon shows his face again, people are happy. Painted red, it is a beautiful thing, as beautiful as the sun shining through the clouds.

Learning to laugh at himself is difficult, but it takes a weight off his chest that he didn’t know was there until it was gone. The sense of letting his mistakes fall off his back is something he needed far more than anything, and Sora is there to catch them.

“You’re right, Sora—it does feel better.”


	7. Excitement

_vii._ **Excited** | ex·cit·ed | \ ik-ˈsī-təd \  
* feeling or showing a heightened state of energy or enthusiasm : EAGER

  


* * *

  
“Roxas, will—?”

Many questions still plague Roxas, so many mysteries of the heart laid out before him. Expressing them adequately is a language that eludes him, filed away in dusty old books locked with a keyhole even he can’t touch.

The pure expression of any type of happiness is still tucked away more firmly than the rest.

Sora never has issue with this; he is the embodiment of excitement, all smiles and laughs and flying limbs as he bounces on his heels, waiting for whatever is coming next. He’s the loud—almost obnoxious—type of excitement, so blatant in its presentation because Sora wears his heart on his sleeve. He gets excited over the smallest of things, over Riku coming over ( _even though Riku always comes over and lives a 5-minute walk away_ ), over finding a quarter on the sidewalk, over a cloud that looks like a dog, over having his favorite food at dinner.

Excitement is one of the best looks on Sora’s face, and that’s why Roxas keeps trying to give it to him. Sora deserves the entire world, and everyone knows it. While he can’t do all that, but he can give it to Sora in small bits and pieces, fragments of promises that he’ll pull from the sky and the ground and everywhere they are presented to him. 

He can offer his loved one joy and excitement in the palm of his hand, in the form of a four-leaf clover or a smooth rock. Sora loves these scattered devotions all the same, and he collects these promises on top of his dresser, in artful disarray as he endlessly smiles over them.

Still, he tells Roxas that he’s the best promise of all, lips pressed against his clumsily, wanting nothing more than the heartbeat underneath his palm.

In return, he tries and tries to get Roxas to be excited, but as always, he’s calmer and more shielded, the tempered moon to Sora’s raging sun. Excitement shows on his face as a mere smile; sometimes, a whole grin can be coaxed out of him, but the true extent of what he feels still hides behind his insecurity about emotions.

He craves being as real and genuine as Sora, unafraid to show positive emotions to the world, unashamedly _him._

And not weak.

No, Roxas could never think Sora is weak for any of his emotions; it’s his own emotions that are weak.

To him, excitement feels childish and weak. It shows the world that he’s far too open with what he desires, and it paints him as a target. If an enemy can see any vulnerability within him, he will be attacked, for reality is relentless and there is always a threat. The worlds are at peace now, they tell him, and the enemies are gone.

But Roxas’s skin still crawls when it gets too dark, he still jumps when he hears the wrong timbre of voice. Ghosts haunt him around every corner, so he can’t show weakness or put his guard down. It doesn’t make sense at all, why excitement tears at his heart so much, but it does, and he puts up his brave face, the one that exists to tell others he’s okay.

The first time excitement _truly_ shows on his face, unfiltered and pure in a way that he must get from his other, is when Sora lays out his own devotion in his palm, akin to Roxas—

But this time, it’s in the form of a small velvet box that shakes just the slightest bit in his hold.

A whole rainbow of emotions crosses Roxas’s face, representative of all the things he’s learned: curiosity, confusion, contemplation, understanding, shock, disbelief, happiness, and finally, excitement, with a litany of tears that rain suit.

Sora finds it just as breathtaking as Roxas finds him; the smile is unpracticed but so genuine in the way it slopes across his face, and his eyes brighten like they’re reflecting the full force of the sun instead of only a teaspoon. He leans just the slightest bit forward on his toes, nodding so enthusiastically that Sora would almost think this was Ventus—if he didn’t know Roxas to the core and back.

At this moment, Roxas finally understands the entirety of what his heart has culminated, growing and stretching out towards the warmth of the sun.

And there’s no weakness, no voice in the back of his head that tells him to rein himself in; all that exists is pure joy, giddiness, anticipation, happiness, _excitement._ And it feels right to feel so _much_ that it hurts his chest and overflows out of his eyes.

The force is so great that Sora is bowled over before the words can even leave his mouth, and his own tears rain—but neither the sun nor the moon is obscured.

For once, nothing plagues him, and his excitement speaks for itself in a language Roxas never knew he could speak all along.

“ _ **Yes!**_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry the last two were late, but i hope you all liked this mess of drabbles! thank you for reading <3

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't written soroku in far too long, so i hope this held up okay! not the happiest with it, but w/e


End file.
